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Jito explained: the MEV and staking layer on Solana

What Jito is on Solana: liquid staking with JitoSOL, MEV tips and bundles, TipRouter, restaking (NCNs, VRTs), and BAM — clearly explained, as of July 2026.

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If you want to understand how blocks get built, MEV gets distributed, and SOL gets staked on Solana, you keep running into the same name. Few projects sit as deep in the network’s infrastructure as Jito.

Short answer: Jito is the MEV and staking layer on Solana. It consists of five building blocks: the Jito-Solana validator client with tip auctions and bundles, the liquid staking token JitoSOL (staking rewards plus an MEV share), the TipRouter for decentralized tip distribution, a restaking layer (NCNs and VRTs), and BAM — a new block-building architecture using Trusted Execution Environments. JTO is the governance token.

In plain terms: Jito turns the race for the best spots in Solana blocks into an orderly auction — and passes part of the proceeds to stakers. If you hold JitoSOL, you earn from staking and from those auctions.

What Jito is at its core

Jito (jito.network) started with a modified validator client: Jito-Solana. It adds a parallel auction on top of Solana’s regular priority fees, where users bid so-called tips to secure additional guarantees that their transaction gets included. Instead of bots flooding the network with spam, they compete in an orderly process — and the proceeds flow to validators and their stakers. According to the Jito Foundation’s own figures, over 90 percent of Solana’s stake weight ran on the Jito-Solana client in early 2025, and tips accounted for nearly half of the network’s Real Economic Value (REV) at that point.

That core has grown into a stack of several building blocks: JitoSOL, the bundle mechanics, the TipRouter, restaking, and BAM. Let’s take them in order.

JitoSOL: liquid staking with an MEV share

JitoSOL is the liquid staking token (LST) of the Jito stake pool, launched in late 2022 and today the largest LST on Solana. The principle: you deposit SOL into the stake pool and receive JitoSOL. The pool delegates your SOL to high-performing, MEV-active validators. JitoSOL then gains value from two sources — regular staking rewards and a share of the MEV tips those validators earn. At the same time, the token stays tradable and usable in DeFi protocols.

The basics of classic staking are covered in our Solana staking guide, and how liquid staking works in general — including the risks (smart contract, de-peg) — in Liquid staking on Solana.

MEV tips and bundles: the mechanics

MEV (Maximum Extractable Value) is the profit that comes from controlling transaction ordering — the details are in MEV on Solana. Jito built a structured interface for it:

  • Bundles: searchers assemble packages of up to 5 transactions that execute atomically and in a fixed order — all or nothing. If one transaction fails, the whole bundle is discarded.
  • Tips: every bundle carries a tip to the validator, at least 1,000 lamports per Jito’s docs. Payment happens via an instruction to one of eight tip accounts; in periods of high demand, the minimum is rarely enough to win the auction in practice.
  • Auction: Jito’s Block Engine selects the most profitable bundles per slot. Whoever bids more goes first.

Worth noting: tips are no longer just a searcher tool. DeFi frontends and wallet infrastructure also use the Jito route to make transactions land reliably — one example is FullSend, the service built with Jito that Privy integrated (our coverage).

TipRouter: who distributes the tips

For a long time, the collected tips were distributed to recipients through a manual off-chain process. Since early 2025, the TipRouter handles this — the first Node Consensus Network (NCN) in the Jito ecosystem. A network of node operators agrees at the end of every epoch on a Merkle root that gets uploaded on-chain, making the payout verifiable.

A total fee of 6 percent applies to the rewards collected via the Block Engine. Since JIP-24 (approved in September 2025), it flows entirely to the Jito DAO — previously, Jito Labs and the DAO split the fee at 3 percent each. Per Jito, 0.15 percent each goes to the JitoSOL and JTO vaults, whose proceeds are split between node operators and stakers — with the remainder (5.7 percent) going to the DAO treasury. Since JIP-16, the TipRouter also routes priority fees in addition to tips (with a separate, lower fee). The DAO — governed via the JTO token — controls the future parameters of this distribution.

Jito Restaking: NCNs and VRTs in brief

The TipRouter already shows the pattern: Jito Restaking lets staked capital secure additional infrastructure. Two terms are enough to understand it:

  • NCN (Node Consensus Network): a network of infrastructure nodes reaching consensus for a service — oracles, bridges, or indeed tip distribution. Operators earn rewards and risk slashing, i.e. losing deposited assets, if they misbehave.
  • VRT (Vault Receipt Token): a token representing a restaking position. You deposit SPL tokens such as JitoSOL into a vault, the vault delegates to selected NCNs, and you receive a tradable VRT in return.

Restaking extends the staking idea: the same economic weight secures more than just the chain’s consensus. But it remains an additional risk layer — more yield sources also mean more slashing and smart contract risk.

BAM: the Block Assembly Marketplace

BAM is Jito’s biggest overhaul since the validator client. Unveiled in July 2025 and live on Solana mainnet since September 25, 2025, BAM moves transaction sequencing into Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) — specialized hardware enclaves. Three properties are central:

  • Privacy: transactions stay encrypted until execution. That removes the visibility that harmful MEV such as front-running depends on.
  • Verifiability: BAM nodes sign cryptographic attestations of transaction ordering. This creates a public audit trail anyone can use to check whether the block leader followed the prescribed order.
  • Programmability: through plugins, applications can inject their own sequencing logic — for example oracle updates in the same block, or priority for market-maker cancels.

Adoption picked up quickly: according to Jito’s Q1 2026 report, BAM’s share of total stake stood at 28.1 percent at the end of Q1, with 363 BAM validators and over 119 million SOL staked — the public roadmap had named 30 percent or more during 2026 as a milestone. In June 2026, Jito additionally reported that more than half of Solana’s validators by count run BAM; see our coverage for how to read that self-reported figure.

At a glance

  • Jito is the MEV and staking layer on Solana — validator client, stake pool, tip distribution, restaking, and block building from one stack.
  • JitoSOL combines staking rewards with a share of MEV tips and stays usable in DeFi.
  • Bundles are atomic packages of up to 5 transactions; the minimum tip is 1,000 lamports.
  • TipRouter distributes tips in a decentralized way; a 6 percent fee applies, going entirely to the Jito DAO since JIP-24.
  • Restaking secures additional services via NCNs; VRTs represent the positions.
  • BAM brings TEE-based privacy, attested ordering, and plugins to block building — with fast-growing validator adoption.

Note: Not financial advice. This article explains a protocol.

Sources

#jito #jitosol #mev #bundles #tiprouter #restaking #bam #jto

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